JERUSALEM – Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip on Monday and cut off the water supply as it kept bombing targets in the crowded Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas surprise assault it has likened to the 9/11 attacks.
Reeling from the group’s unprecedented ground, air and sea attacks, Israel has counted over 700 dead and launched a withering barrage of strikes on Gaza that have raised the death toll there to 560 people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that “what Hamas will experience will be difficult and terrible … We are going to change the Middle East.”
“This is only the beginning,” he vowed. “We will defeat them with force, enormous force.”
The skies over Gaza were blackened by plumes of smoke from deafening explosions as Hamas kept launching rockets as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where missile defense systems fired and air raid sirens blared.
Hamas – whose militants surged into Israeli towns on Saturday, spraying gunfire at civilians and dragging off about 100 hostages – claimed on Monday that Israeli air strikes had killed four of the captives.
Israel said it had called up 300,000 army reservists for its “Swords of Iron” campaign, and truck convoys were moving tanks to the south, where its forces had dislodged the last holdout Hamas fighters from embattled towns.
“We are in control of the communities,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on the long blockaded enclave and stressed what this meant for its 2.3 million people: “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.”
Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory braced for what many feared will be a massive Israeli ground attack aiming to defeat Hamas and liberate the hostages.
Netanyahu has warned Gaza civilians to get away from all Hamas sites, which he vowed to turn “to rubble”.
Lebanon border clash
Middle East tensions have spiked as Israel’s arch enemy Iran and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah have praised the Hamas attack, although Tehran rejected any role in the military operation.
Hamas has called on “resistance fighters” in the occupied West Bank and in Arab and Islamic nations to join its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, launched half a century after the 1973 Arab-Israel war.
“The military operation is still continuing,” Hossam Badran, a Hamas official, told AFP from Qatar’s capital Doha, adding that “there is currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else”.
Qatar has hosted a political office for Hamas for over a decade and has been one of the group’s principal backers.
The US has pledged “rock solid” support for Israel and said it would send munitions and military hardware to its key ally and divert an aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean.
Israel, which has long prided itself on a high-tech military and intelligence edge in its many conflicts, has been shaken to the core by Hamas’s unprecedented attack.
It now faces the threat of a multi-front war after Hezbollah launched guided missiles and artillery shells from the north on Sunday “in solidarity” with Hamas, in what some observers considered a warning shot.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have condemned the abduction of Israeli civilians by Hamas during its assault on Israel, calling for diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting.
On Monday, the Israeli army said its soldiers had “killed a number of armed suspects” who had crossed the border from Lebanon and that Israeli helicopters were striking targets in the area.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad later claimed responsibility for the thwarted infiltration from Lebanon to Israel.
They butchered people
Israel has expressed alarm and revulsion at the Hamas attack across the Gaza border fence – long deemed impregnable and guarded by surveillance cameras, drones, patrols and watchtowers – and the bloody violence they unleashed.
Among the hostages they took back into Gaza were children and a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair, Israeli officials have said.
Up to 250 bodies were strewn across the site of a music festival in a Negev desert kibbutz, mostly young people, and charred car wrecks were piled up in a sign of the panicked rush to escape, while other revelers were feared to be among the hostages.
“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” said Moti Bukjin of the Zaka religious volunteer group which helped collect the human remains.
Israelis have voiced anger at the intelligence failure that blindsided the nation on a Jewish holiday.
But for now its people appeared to have put aside deep political divisions that have long roiled the country and braced for what the right-wing veteran premier Netanyahu has warned will be a “long and difficult war”.
In constant fear
“Never before have so many Israelis been killed by one single thing, let alone enemy activity in one day,” said army spokesman Jonathan Conricus.
The multi-pronged attack had brought “by far the worst day in Israeli history”, he said, likening it to a combination of the “9/11 and Pearl Harbor” attacks.
The situation was also dire inside Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel since Hamas assumed control there 15 years ago, a period that has seen four wars with Israel before the latest escalation.
Air strikes have wrought widespread destruction in Gaza’s refugee camp of Jabalia, where charred bodies were pulled from the rubble and relatives wailed in grief.
Earlier strikes have leveled residential tower blocks, a large mosque and the territory’s major bank building.
Over 120,000 people in Gaza have been displaced amid the carnage, said the United Nations.
“The situation is unbearable,” said Amal al-Sarsawi, 37, as she took shelter in a school classroom with her terrified children.
Minors in war zone have felt their sense of safety “ripped away” said Jason Lee of charity group Save the Children. “Our teams and their families are terrified, they feel like sitting targets. Children across the region are in constant fear.”
Global shock waves
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have rallied in support and clashed with Israeli security forces, leaving 15 Palestinians dead since Saturday.
Anti-Israel activists have demonstrated in many countries while security was stepped up around Jewish temples and school worldwide.
The spiraling conflict has sent shock waves around the world, sparking a surge in oil prices on fears of tightening supplies.
US energy firm Chevron said it suspended operations at a natural gas platform off Israel’s coast, at the request of authorities there.
Several countries have condemned the attack by Hamas.
The EU has halted development aid payments to the Palestinians and said it was placing 691 million euros of support “under review”.
Spain said that it “disagrees” with EU’s decision to suspend development aid.
Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country has historically been a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, spoke with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, agreeing to “intensify discussions and diplomatic efforts to stop military escalation”.
Abu Dhabi normalized relations with Tel Aviv in 2020 under the US-backed Abraham Accords, over four decades after Cairo became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
“The ministry stressed that attacks by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza Strip, including the firing of thousands of rockets at population centers, are a serious and grave escalation,” the UAE’s foreign ministry said in a statement late on Sunday.
“Bahrain denounces…. the kidnapping of civilians from their homes as hostages,” a foreign ministry statement said, calling for immediate efforts to stop the fighting.
On Sunday, Sisi spoke with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, warning of the dangerous “absence of political prospects”.
Abbas’ government administers the occupied West Bank, while Hamas governs the Gaza Strip.
Sisi also spoke on Sunday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose country acts as custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and recognized Israel in 1994.
Since Saturday, Sisi has also spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron, European Council President Charles Michel, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
On Sunday, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani held a call with Palestinian president Abbas, saying Qatar was “making all its diplomatic efforts with various concerned parties” in a bid to de-escalate the conflict.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that creating a Palestinian state was the “most reliable” solution for peace in Israel and that fighting terrorism alone would not ensure security.
He spoke during a press conference with the head of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who visited Russia after the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on Saturday.
Foreign or dual nationals have been reported killed, abducted or missing by countries including Brazil, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Paraguay, Thailand, Ukraine and the United States.
Israel issued a travel warning for its citizens, especially in the Middle East, after an Egyptian police officer shot dead two Israeli tourists on Sunday.
The Arab League said its foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday to discuss “Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip”.